While the shelters will be a part of the city’s shelter system, state funds will be used to build the facilities, operate the shelter and provide services, including conflict resolution. There are now nearly 12,800 migrants in city-run shelters, an all-time high.

In the run up to the March primary election, the spotlight for Chicago-area voters will focus on races for state’s attorney, circuit court clerk, a key seat in the Illinois House to represent the city’s Northwest Side and two Congressional contests.

Ald. Julia Ramirez (12th Ward) said Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office informed her late Friday that work would begin Monday on the base camp over her objections and after the discovery of “toxic metals” on the site.

“The most fundamental thing is you don’t allow someone’s hatred to infiltrate how you see people,” Rahm Emanuel said. “There is a fundamental goodness in people. I have seen it, I have been a product of it. Have I had antisemitism directed at me? Yes, but I’ve also had the American story.”

The new policy could mean more than 3,000 people will lose their beds in city shelters by early February, with the rest forced out by April.

With Congress unwilling to act, Illinois has no chance to step in because lives are at stake, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.

The budget, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2024, includes no new taxes, fees or service cuts, making it much easier for alderpeople to back the plan touted by Mayor Brandon Johnson as a down payment on promises to invest in working-class Chicagoans.

The announcement represents Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first attempt to reduce the city resources available to the migrants currently in the city’s shelter system.

Dr. Olusimbo “Simbo” Ige will now be asked to deliver on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s vision of public health for Chicago — while coping with the continuing pandemic.

A key vote by the Chicago City Council’s Rules Committee could come as soon as Thursday on a measure that would ask voters during the March primary whether Chicago should remain a sanctuary city.

Once the proposal takes effect Dec. 31, Chicago workers will be able to take more sick leave than workers in New York City and Los Angeles. They will also be able to take time off for any reason, not just if they or a family member falls ill, unlike workers in any other U.S. city.

State Sen. Rob Martwick, the measure's author, praised Mayor Brandon Johnson for confronting Chicago’s pension woes. The bill ensures that all retired Chicago police officers get a 3% annual cost-of-living increase, regardless of whether they were born before or after Jan. 1, 1966.

Approximately 1,500 men, women and children are sleeping in thin tents outside police stations across the city, officials said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is backing the creation of a new subcommittee to study reparations and is agreeing to earmark $500,000 in his 2024 spending plan to fund the panel’s work.

The newly created Department of Reentry would have a budget of $5 million and four employees charged with helping formerly incarcerated individuals in Chicago get what “they need to thrive in this city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

“I felt like I was back in the South,” said Ald. Emma Mitts, who grew up in Arkansas, during the era of Jim Crow. “I felt like everything in me was shaking.”